A conventional personal computer (PC) system typically includes a sound card that is connected to the data bus on a motherboard of the PC. Most sound cards include microphone and line level ports for input of analog audio signals and process audio data for output to external speakers. Although the analog audio signal that is output from a sound card may be stereo, and in newer sound cards, may be Dolby Prologic™ or 5.1 channel Dolby Digital™, only a single stream of audio data is processed by a sound card to produce these output channels. However, the sound processing system on a typical PC enables audio signals from various different sources to be combined to produce the single stream of audio data that is processed for output by the sound card.
Customarily, the relative volume for signals from several different sound sources such as a compact disk (CD), wave files, musical instrument digital interface (MIDI), and the line level input is controlled by a software mixer, but the resulting analog signal produced by the sound card represents only a single data stream for the mixed signals input to the sound card. The limited ability of a PC and sound card to process only a single stream of audio data is particularly troublesome during multiplayer games, as will be evident from the following. Multiplayer games have recently become very popular on the Internet because they enable a user to participate in games with other players, either as separate individuals or as team members. Microsoft Corporation's Internet Game Zone is just one web site that facilitates multiplayer games. Communication among players is often a key aspect of multiplayer game play. For example, members of a team must communicate to devise strategy during on-line chat sessions as a game progresses. Currently, players typically communicate by entering text in a chat dialog for transmission over the network to one or more selected other players in the game.
There are several disadvantages to the text-based chat sessions during multiplayer games. A text-based form of chat communication favors those players with the best typing skills; and it requires players to set aside their game control devices (e.g., a joystick or gamepad) in order to use a keyboard to chat with other players. To minimize the amount of typing required while chatting in this manner, more experienced players have developed abbreviated code to communicate longer messages with fewer characters. Newer players, who do not understand this code, are confused and alienated until they learn the shorthand abbreviations. Most of these problems could be avoided by enabling players to communicate verbally, by simply speaking into a microphone. Although a sound card is able process verbal chat messages of this type, verbal chat messaging during multiplayer game play has not been widely used, because of the limitation of PCs and sound cards noted above. If a sound card is used for processing the chat session audio data stream, sounds associated with or produced by execution of the game software on the player's PC will either be unavailable, or must be mixed with the chat audio data, thereby tending to obscure the verbal content of the chat messages. Ideally, a player should be able to hear the chat verbal communication separately from the game sounds. The game sounds will typically obscure the verbal communications at least some of the time, if the two audio data streams are mixed and processed as a single audio data stream by a sound card and PC.
One of the advantages of modem computer games played on a PC is that the PC and sound card can deliver relatively high-quality music and sound effects in sync with the action in a game. Clearly, given a choice between using a sound card to experience the game sounds, or for chatting with other players, most people have preferred to experience the game-related sounds and rely upon text-based chat sessions for communication with other players. It would therefore be advantageous to enable game players to experience both the audio data provided by the game and the audio data delivered in a chat session among players. By providing each player in a multiplayer game with a microphone and enabling them to selectively chat with other players in the game so that the sound from the chat session is delivered to headphone(s) worn by the players while the game sounds are separately reproduced by speakers attached to a sound card (or to a universal serial bus (USB) port on PCs that do not include a sound card), a much broader range of game player interaction can be achieved without sacrificing the enjoyment of the game audio data. Use of headphone(s) for reproducing the verbal messages of a chat session during game play enables the localization of the chat messages by the player and avoids problems in understanding the messages, since chat messages heard over headphone(s) are not likely to be obscured by separate game sounds heard from speakers. The problem that must be solved is how to simultaneously deliver game sounds without mixing them with the verbal messages in a stream of audio data from a chat session while the multiplayer game is being executed. By enabling players to communicate during game play in a verbal chat session, the need for a player to set aside a joystick or other game controller to enter text-based chat messages would be avoided.
It would further be desirable to enable a game player to verbally control a game rather than actuating keys on a keyboard to enter secondary game commands that are not controlled by a game input device. Finding a particular key on a keyboard can be distracting and can interfere with a player's control of a game input device, such as a joystick. Ideally, verbal control of a game should be speaker independent; it should also be possible for a player to specify words that will used to control a game, on a game-by-game basis. By providing a verbal command and control function, a player should be able to keep both hands on a game input control and map alternate or secondary game commands to the voice input. Further, the same microphone used for input of verbal chat messages should also be usable for verbal command and control of a game if an appropriate switch is provided to control the software so as to enable the user to make this selection. Thus, a player should be able to toggle the switch to selectively determine whether the analog audio signal from the microphone is directed by software to the verbal command and control of the game or instead transmitted as a chat message over the network to one or more other players. Currently, the prior art does not include hardware or software for carrying out these functions.